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ratherhavetheblues · 4 years

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘THE SERPENT’S EGG’ “You’ve been thinking much too much, lately…”

The films of Ingmar Bergman are all of a piece. They endeavor, from many angles, to make sense of the powers that be. This concern is particularly pressing in regard to the work today, namely, The Serpent’s Egg (1977). On the basis of many vicissitudes of Bergman’s history at that production, a whole industry arose, of delighting in what seemed to have been a weakening of confidence—on the very flimsy basis of punitively catching Bergman straying from his vigorous roots. Were the wags to have troubled themselves to comprehend those roots (well disclosed), they would have dropped that childish game and got down to business.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, we must turn to recognize our guide’s commitment to taking on a field of very complex physicality. At the outset of his career—in the film, Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), with the figure of Alma and her brief but impressive ecstatic balance; and in the film, The Seventh Seal (1957), with Jof and Marie, and their child hopefully one day excelling in acrobatics and juggling—we have an invitation to a party of unending carnal delivery.

If you think that tax problems; turning away from a homeland to resettle in Germany; and linking with a Hollywood bagman (Dino De Laurentiis [in fact, at that time, only recently based in the USA]; and with involvement in La Strada, Nights of Cabira, and Blue Velvet] could destabilize the resolve of Bergman’s interests, you don’t know what this priority entails. Moreover, there was cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, still in place and game for risking new visuals with unusually big bucks.)

Relocating to Munich, he would have been strongly reminded of his frequent (though unspoken as such) engagement with fascism, that simplistic and often murderous keening for absolute, homogeneous gratifications. To date, his most probing construct of the phenomenon of such arrested, facile obsession resided in his film, The Passion of Anna (1969). There, in a remote, rural corner of the already remote Sweden, a woman, namely Anna, manages to spearhead a one-person massacre on the pretext that her supposed entitlement to having things entirely her pedantic and dim way has gone awry. Though very clever, her scheme could not have reached its successes without the complicity of a muddled artisan/ farmer, namely, Andreas. With the windfall from Los Angeles, Bergman would seize the moment to revisit the serpent that was Anna. But this time Anna would be a jackboot mob, while a Saint Anna Clinic would oversee the early phase of a tinkering of wanton, sadistic “experimentation” with human subjects. Another muddled artist, namely, Abel (and you know, sort of, where that’s going), teams up with his widowed sister-in-law; and urban decadence replaces the hot-house sophistication of Anna’s hosts, Elis and Eva, in the country. It is the Eva-moment here, namely, Manuela, who, along with Abel, make The Serpent’s Egg a thrilling study of large-scale cowardice and small-scale love.

Although there will be here the usual dazzling theatrical-dramatic display in order to convey the corridors of problematics—including a number of failing oracles— this film (quick to exploit the financial heft) becomes more a filmic tone-poem than dramaturgy. Therefore, I want to start out (the vehicle’s venue being chilly Berlin, in 1923) with the panoply of woolen apparel. One of Anna’s cheap coups was slashing up a flock of disinterested—thereby superior to her—sheep. And that bloodbath becomes a visceral presence as to savoring a unique progress amidst protracted distemper. In mythology, Abel was a shepherd. In cinematography, Abel, a bit of a fashion-plate with his two-toned dancing shoes (seemingly ready to star on Broadway or in Hollywood), sports a cute woolen fedora which, were you to concentrate solely on it, might make one believe that he is quite alive. (To complete the effect, while disregarding his face, he wears a dark tan woolen jacket over a light tan woolen shirt. His woolen scarf is black. His woolen pants correspond to the rest of the ensemble to complete an impression of careful selection and taste.) Just before we first meet him, there is the film’s opening scene of a throng of Berliners moving toward us in slow-motion—also in woolens, with some of the women’s cloche hats resembling sheep heads—and resembling a push to market. The murky, black and white cinematography there (with the film actually in color) elicits a venerable state of affairs; and beyond that, there is the perpetual gloom upon Abel’s visage, and his veering body language. He looks up Manuela (a risqué dancer at a cabaret; but more than that), with news that his brother—once being a member with the other two in a circus act, and such a pain in the ass she had to dump him—had shot the so-called, “Max,” through his throat depositing his brains all over the back of his bed. The show had to go on after her departure; but a career-ending accident to the Caine left the boys in a crisis—softy Abel losing his nerve to start afresh upon major creation. Abel might be a write-off. But, bright as a button, Manuela, has found a gig that works for her. Though the patrons would not know about it—and perhaps even would prefer something more predictable—she (true to the mystery of her trapeze practice) has migrated to that shock and awe known as German Expressionist dance (Neuer Tanz), where body action gets uncanny. That night, bedecked in curly green sheep hair, she splays her legs and, pounding out some Germanic chant, becomes a possessed puppet or doll, a seductive siren, or a creature crying out during a slaughter. Abel, the former risk-taker and maven of alternate sublime, scowls and, as he no doubt found very early at his family mansion, adopts a hard line toward the great unwashed. Max (the elevated) and Abel (the sweet) had, no doubt, an early spree of rebellion (always mindful of a generous safety net, but going on to dispense with it from out of their pitiful Bohemian pride).

Getting to the bottom of this crisis of mood will have been assisted by two other figures—his dare-devil, former boss, from a past at that mixed fun-time; and the Chief of Police, drawing from the “survivor” particulars about the actions of two English speakers, lacking German (and one, Manuela, European of unknown background) in the crash of post-World War I Germany. He tells the cop and us, “I was born in Philadelphia [the liberty town]. My folks come from Riga, in Latvia. The three of us came to Berlin” [after Max’s accident]. Back, close to the stage where Manuela is doing pretty well, someone addresses the guy expensively dressed, not doing well at all, “Did we smoke our first cigarette together? Amalfi, 26 years ago. Our cottages were next door to each other. Rebecca, right?” Abel rudely rushes away. But his Eurotrash, overstuffed appetites don’t get lost.

Going back to the film’s beginning can better establish the pitch of that (spent) force. Coming home at dark, staggering from a chronic drunkenness, he almost relishes the horribleness of his shabby existence. “A pack of cigarettes costs 400 billion Marks, and almost everybody has lost faith in both the future and the present…” Overheated, melodramatic gestures like that—extending to the work’s title—saturate the dimensions of the double protagonists. Entering what the brothers have been able to afford (and perhaps the mainspring of the suicide by the only employable sibling), Abel pauses at the foyer where a large room accommodates a dinner/ prayer meeting. At the open doorway, there is a panel of geometric, mutedly colored décor, rather closely resembling the stained-glass windows of Andreas, whose fecklessness is no match for a filthy brute like Anna. Abel is arrested by the warm and gentle union, its hymns and the piety of the assembly. He breaks out in a rare smile. Tears stream down his cheeks. Recall the sudden and short-lived passion of Andreas on noting the uncanniness of the sun while he does repairs on his roof. Consider the difference. Notice the maudlin state of our protagonist here. Also notice that, on encountering the suicide, Abel rushes back and forth in his lostness, the same Samuel Beckett-rattled back and forth at the end of The Passion of Anna, where the killer drives away and the not tough-enough artist resorts to signs of absurdity.

On following Manuela’s exit from the stage that first night, we become even more vividly aware of her (perhaps fleeting) sensuous priorities. Her departure is given super-closeup, in such a way that areas of her body and her costume define her by region rather than individual. So sanguine is she with her innovation, she seems incapable of fathoming the uniqueness of the register, the pitch of intensity and rigors which could very well spell a tiny range of interaction. A person like Abel, now reduced to parasitical opportunism, would very clearly regard her as a precious dreamer—a precious dreamer with a cash-flow. A person like Manuela, who was fortunate in being in high favor by her landlady/ oracle (who was also an aficionado of radical design [Jugendstil, “Youth-Style”]), might have been shown invaluable wisdom by the friend, were the ancient not fearful of the subject conflict—secretly witnessing Abel’s stealing the other protagonist’s savings and doing nothing about it but telling him, later, “I’m very attached to Manuela. If you forgive me my saying so, I’m as fond of her as if she were my daughter. She’s so kind, naïve [here giving him a hard look]…It’s that there’s all the terrible things going around. I think your sister-in-law is heading for trouble. The thing about Manuela is she doesn’t defend herself. Nothing must happen to her…” Such a gambit being itself a tonal terrain of deadly retreat.

Wearing her woolen cloche on the tram ride home from the night, she finds Abel crumpled up in the doorway to her flat. Holding him up, she unwittingly brings him to the money; but treasures of the specialty of the house emanate along with her own modest effects. Such incisiveness, however, must wait till next morning; and, even then, he starts by blathering away about the family next to them, at Amalfi, where the master of the house, a Supreme Court Justice, would cut open a farm animal to see the heart still beating. As Manuela puts together a breakfast, we notice on the austere but carefully incisive wallpaper, two lithographic circus posters—one, depicting a man and a woman, upside-down, clinging by their feet to a trapeze; and the other showing a woman bare-back rider. No one refers to them for a moment; but you know she would have had long, penetrating times in their presence—not only about the vignettes but the uptakes of the wider tones. Even though he forces upon her a wad of low-value currency, explaining, “You should take the money before I spend it on booze,” she imagines that they could dazzle once again as a high-precision circus act. Perhaps she banks upon her charisma to overcome any obstacle. And, therein, a mood of tailspin burns brightly. The shrunken heart, responds with, “I don’t know. What good is it without Max?.. It’s a nightmare…” She embraces him, in a bid to lift his spirits. “We’re going to do it,” she enthuses. “You think too much… We can do a new number, just you and me. We could make magic. I know a wonderful magician. We could take over his show!” (The initiatives being far from coherent. But here we occupy a play of mood, which impacts in its own ways.) In reply, there’s the one-note, “I don’t know. Since this business with Max…” (And he cries.) Despite the discouragement coming her way, she tries the coquetry, “You’ll be my big brother. We’re going to stick together now…” That his repetitive dirge—“I wake up from a nightmare…”—becomes ludicrous, only confirms that a whole other world buoys her. As she iterates, “Everything is alright! We have everything we need,” it is that “which we need” which possibly turns things thing around for her, leaving the pessimist far behind. Can her upbeat heart hang on? He tells for her his seeing Nazi goons getting away with murder the night before. And she tiptoes around her second job as a hooker for the wealthy. She moves along with, “You’ve been thinking much too much, lately…You’re awfully tired…” (Unspoken and probably confusedly, would be, “You’ve been thinking like and old man!”) “I’m going to look after you, you know… And in a few days everything will be much better. You’ll see…” As she goes to her bemusing job (which he tries to treat as the end of the world), she’s in furs.

The smashing of Manuela’s inadequate roots is both dismaying and uplifting. Abel is obliged to return to the police station to settle details; and thereby the money he has just stolen is confiscated by a matter of routine. At the tail end of his bizarre and revealing brush with justice, Manuela appears there (as hopefully finding a pedestrian clue to what was in fact a fear of life itself, but in hopes that Abel might know what happened to her money). She’s seated at a table, and the brother-in-law walks past her without looking her way. This, by way of a visit to Abel being held for information about Max and a slew of other corpses. He silently brazens his involvement, and adds, “Luckily, I’m in charge of Max’s money…” As the interview proceeds, she loses her concentration, and Abel faults her for lagging. She asks, “Please be nice to me…”

On the day the landlady demands the rat out, leading to Manuela’s angry rupture of a wise friend, our protagonist rallies a bit in visiting a church. But we are now approaching such a meltdown of cogent vision and tone—acceptance of Abel a form of insanity—that the narrative commences to sport auras of (largely, American film) clichés—becoming, in themselves, not only a warning but a fissure leading to depths. (Bergman seizing the singularity for all its worth.) Although he easily stalks her to the site, he totally misses the action. First a flock of candles, with Abel back in the gloom. Overkill, where three would do the trick. She addresses the eccentric American priest; but he’s, at this point, distracted. Bing Crosby would never have slipped that way. She soldiers on: “My father was a magician. My mother was a circus rider. I’ve been in circuses all my life [unlike the upstarts]… I need to speak to somebody, do you understand?… Oh, this guilt is too much for me! And I feel it’s my fault that Max committed suicide… Now I have to take care of Max’s brother. And it’s even worse! Why he’s just like Max. He never says what he’s thinking. He just charges ahead with his feelings and he looks so frightened. And I tried to tell him that we’ll help each other… That’s only words to him. And everything I say is useless. The only real thing is fear! And I’m sick. I don’t know what’s wrong…” The priest asks, “Would you like me to pray for you?”/ “Think that will help?” she asks. “I don’t know,” the expert admits. They kneel together and soon she wonders, “Is it a special prayer?”/ “Yes,” he finds the cogency to declare. (A vehicle, that is, which she’s been delighted by many times in the past; only to let it slip away.) He adds, “We live so far away from God. So far away that God doesn’t hear us when we call out… So we must help each other give each other the forgiveness a remote God denies it. I tell you, you are forgiven for your husband’s death. You’re no longer to blame. [The priest having read between the lines.] I beg your forgiveness for my apathy and my indifference. Do you forgive me?”/ “Yes,” she rather confusedly replies. “I forgive you.” This elicits the clang sound repeatedly sounding at the beginning of the film, sounding to the roots. “That’s all we can do,” he closes. (Leaving the question, “Is that really all we can do?” Could it be that the powers-that-be require our dance/ acrobatic initiative to really rock? Could it be that asking is the wrong gambit. Active partnering would entail graces enough.)

Manuela’s pristine partnering becoming rapidly collapsing, she finds a workhouse connected with Saint Anna’s Clinic (“Please say it’s nice…”), and Abel let’s her know it’s beneath his dignity. On to the cabaret which, that night, is visited by a Nazi unit (one of the highlights being the owner’s beaten to a pulp, somewhat like, much later, the beating from Cliff to an enemy, in Tarantino’s Once upon a Time in Hollywood. Intense action often drawing upon a volume of sensibility missing the mark.) But the most telling moment, from our perspective, is the spectacle (seen from a bird’s eye view) of our protagonist in her avant-garde costume consumed by a terrified throng. (The collapse of mood being our investigative task.) She goes to work in the clinic’s laundry, and she becomes ill from pneumonia. She tells Abel, now working nearby in a vast archive (apt for someone locked away in the past), “I don’t think I can stand it here.” In an echo of her best self, she smiles and says, “It could have been worse.” That night, he beats her up; and melodramatic complaint takes over. “I just say, if you won’t believe, you can go! I’ve done everything to keep us together. I just can’t go on any more…” She hammers on the table. All the savoir faire having abandoned her. Abel cuts out and walks past a group butchering a horse that was once a going concern. The horse’s beautiful head was seen intact, to bring to bear the powers of a creature the vivacity of which far surpasses domestic exigencies. The one who couldn’t stay returns to Manuela’s corpse. He shakes her brutally, hoping to bring her back to life. He had picked her to the bones. (Those faulting Bergman’s cosmic vehicle in preference to Bob Fosse’s domestic and political musical, namely, Cabaret [1972], have been barking up the wrong tree.)

During his stroll to escape Manuela’s last ditch feeling of affection, he activates a study of the difference between Sportin’ Life and lively sport. After stuffing Marks into a barkeeper’s mouth and going on to smash with his bottle the window of a lovingly maintained woolen’s shop, he uses his plush dancing shoes to hoofer-style disappear to an alleyway replete with a young hooker. Once again, as with the raid, the scene is taken from a considerable distance, and at a rather stagey height. His opening, “Go away,” has about it many Broadway tinctures. (The alley is clearly a sound stage.) “Come with me! It’s warm. You can have it any way you want…” “Go to hell,” he studiously emotes. She chuckles, and her delivery seems from Iowa. “Where do you think you are—at Times Square?” she sweetly fusses. A muted honky-tonk drifts their way; and he goes her way. (The sentimental film, Going my Way (1944), with its unorthodox priest, is all over the vignette of Manuela and the American clergyman. Classics on the move. Distress in the mood. The millions to make this film/ tone poem were not wasted, as ridiculous trolls would have it.)

Disabled Abel and the night worker enter a brothel bristling with poor breeding. The prevailing trick soon reveals itself to be humiliation of a crippled, impotent and noisily opinionated black. Though a show-biz tragedy is ready to make you squirm, those of us, remembering Bergman, recall the film, Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), and its routed ringmaster becoming a figure of public and private defeat. With so much slippage in the air, this episode puts us in need of finding a way that works. Manuela’s mother was a circus rider, perhaps making waves in the midst of that corporate collapse. A lady clown, Alma, dazzled for a few moments much of the army, before subsiding to tending to an old bear, whom the beaten boss shot to death, in a cowardly attempt not to look weak. But with the specifics of the brothel, we enter upon a measure of consistently oblivious frenzy for the sake of the enjoyment of empty advantage. The new friends inhabit the world of George Gershwin’s opera, Porgy and Bess (1935). Cowardly Abel toys (like the opera’s villain, “Crown”) with a crippled and fiercely loquacious, Porgy, who bids, to neither sexual nor social effect, to rescue, Bess. “You’re tryin’ to kill me! You’re tryin’ to fuck me! I can’t fuck! Worst bitch in the whole damn world! She’s got fangs, I saw them!” The object of this fury laughs. “That big mouth bitch! I’m not a queer. That’s a goddamn lie!” (A clown show, drifting over to the beaten ringmaster; and the beaten has-been!) Abel would also double here as cynical, “Sportin’ Life,” always the vicious oracle. Abel bets him to come. More humiliation. More of Saint Anna and her security of delivery.

Our denouement entails further rigidity against the prospects of that cogency we’re tracking becoming widespread. There are two instances of Abel’s being the beneficiary of oldsters’ letting their sunny hopes prevail over what is a rather obvious phenomenon of failure to thrive. He crosses paths with the impresario whom he and Max and Manuela starred for. The elder is supple and intense; Abel might as well be headed for palliative care. He disregards the question, “How are Max and Manuela?” In spite of this, the gambler insists, “The circus needs you!” Invited to lunch at a posh restaurant, Abel consumes much alcohol in slight time. He also, from out of a life-long distemper, plunks his sheep skin hat over the head of a nude sculpture. His host tells him, “Nowadays I can get any dance star I want. They all know I pay in dollars…” Disregarding the rudeness and alcoholism, he switches to the day’s newspaper and regards the actions there as more entertainment. He thrills to, “… the massacre of Christians by the Jews… the Bolsheviks coming to Germany and stumbling over the bodies of your women and children…” The showman asks, “Why don’t you say something?” In reply he produces a pedantic doctrine which Anna, the security maven, could have written. “I don’t care about political crap. The Jews are as stupid as everybody. If a Jew gets into trouble it’s his own fault. He gets into trouble because he acts stupid. I’m not gonna get stupid, so I’m not gonna get into trouble.” Tone deaf through the whole exercise.

The second senior, who could have anticipated aberrant performance in Abel, is the Chief of Police, who misreads peevishness for commitment. The Chief has an idea that Max was only one of a large number of victims to a mass assailant, not quite as slick as Anna. The investigation, involving the sibling, begins where Max maxed-out and a hurdy-gurdy man with a little monkey gives the street some shine. On to the morgue, where the person of interest touches upon more than a limited errancy. A series of blood-spattered shrouds confront them; and each station has a link to Anna. Max’s suicide may be light years away from Johan’s, but comparisons can divulge important truths. Abel recognizes the first woman to be shown as having been engaged to his brother. At another perspective, there was Anna forcibly tearing her (understandably fed-up) husband away from a woman he preferred to her. (Cause of death, drowning.) Another incident gives Abel the sense of recalling his father. Repeating the outrage of Anna’s leaving Johan (a father-figure to Andreas) to seem to the world to have butchered a flock of sheep, which brought upon the innocent man such cruelty that he committed suicide, the other father would be another kill of hers. The Chief adds, “Someone stuck a hypodermic needle into this man’s heart. It probably took several hours…” Then there is an aged woman whom Abel has seen but can’t fully detail. “I think she delivered papers. I used to meet her at Frau Lanci’s boarding house. Once she helped me up the stairs when I was drunk, too drunk to make it on my own. Her name is Maria Stahn. She left a very strange letter. ‘The husband was half out of the windshield.’ He worked at the cabaret, in the entrance.” The fallible investigator adds, “We are not certain how he was killed. He seems to have been run over by a truck, but something tells us he’d been assaulted or tortured.” In the land of the prototype of mad safety, there was the treachery of Hour of the Wolf (1968), pertaining to the strange, warning letter; and, then also, Anna, and her note (written by the husband) to Andreas; and a husband killed by her sneakingly catapulting him through their car windshield.

Suckered by the non-acrobat’s bathos, the old cop opens up with, “All over Germany, millions are terrified… but I’d be delighted to see you swing on your trapeze with your peers. That way you fight your fear.” He provides a police escort to a train to Basel, where the circus works at being fearless. But he slips away from the goodwill and disappears forever.

Before he’s mercifully gone, he visits, by way of his archival links, the brain-trust behind that recent plague of violent deaths. There he can measure his own puny pedantry against a far more virulent rationality (another Anna). What could be more appropriate than an Alfred Hitchcock “exciting twist” to send the patrons home feeling that rational goodwill must always prevail. The carriage-trade chum from Amalfi pops up in a lab coat, and delivers a rationale for studies in human endurance (along the way, giving scope for a family trait of sadism). (Abel spends most of the experience covering his eyes with his hands.) With the Chief on his tail, the so-called “heavy” bites his cyanide capsule, while the law shoots away the door. “We are ahead of our time,” the researcher/ melodramatic oracle had assured Abel. “In a few years, science will ask for my documents, to continue our experiment on a gigantic scale. What you have seen are the first steps of a necessary and logical development… The old society, based on extremely romantic ideas of man’s goodness, was all very complicated… The new society will be based on man’s potential and limitations. We exterminate what’s inferior.” (Mood becoming bilious. Melodrama becoming empty.)

Hitch, always leaving the customers with a witticism, has the Chief—that genius of human nature—brag, as to a recent abortive putsch by Hitler, “He underestimated the strength of the German democracy.”

Hovering over the mad professor is his surname, “Vergerus”—the surname of Anna and the surname of a proto-fascist doctor, in the Bergman film, The Magician (1958). They’ll never go away, because cowardice will never go away. Our film today anticipates slight but meaningful progress.

#ingmar bergman

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newsnigeria · 5 years

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Proxy WAR, Syria: Explaining Russia’s Position on Idlib

by Ollie Richardson Ooduarre via The Saker Blog

Over the past five years my work in the information space has been consciously aimed at explaining why the Russian military does and doesn’t do certain things, whether it be in relation to Ukraine, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Venezuela, etc, and why demanding that Putin bombs everything in sight is exactly what the CIA wants so-called “pro-Russians” to say. Yet I haven’t exhausted (maybe I never will exhaust it?) this topic because it is so vast and, ultimately, complex. And it is because of this seemingly insurmountable complexity that questions like “Why doesn’t Russia liberate all of Ukraine”, “Why doesn’t Russia save Donetsk and Lugansk in the same way it saved Crimea?”, “Why doesn’t Russia boot America out of Syria?”, etc are asked on social media.

But one statement that I haven’t really addressed (until now) is “Why doesn’t Russia liberate all of Idlib in one fell swoop?”. Many “geniuses” like to say that Putin is in bed with the “Ottoman butcher” Erdogan and has thus “betrayed Syria”, similar to how shaking hands with Netanyahu means that Putin is a Zionist and has “betrayed Syria”, or even that a visit of the Saudi King to Moscow means that Putin has the blood of Yemen on his hands.

So, those “pro-Russian” readers who fear that they may be one step ahead of the Kremlin and can see an iceberg on the horizon needn’t worry – another Putin-esque zugswang is in progress!

When Russia sent its aviation to Hmeymim airbase in Syria in 2015 the primary mission was simple: remove Turkey – the main belligerent – from the game. Ankara benefited from ISIS’ theft of Syrian oil and controlled many jihadist groups on the ground (Ahrar al-Sham being the main one). Then in November 2015 the CIA (via the PM at the time Ahmet Davutoğlu) decided to float a test balloon and see how Russia would react to a carefully designed scenario. A Turkish F-16 shot down a Russian Su-24. It didn’t matter if the Turkish jet was in Syrian airspace or not, as Moscow knew exactly what had happened, and all the other players knew that Moscow knew. The actual murder of one of the ejecting Russian pilots was carried out by a proxy (a Grey Wolf), and not by a Turkish soldier. But in any case, this test miserably failed, because Russia did not react in a way that would contravene international law (the immediate response happened hours after the shootdown – Russian “advisors” and Syrian troops went to Latakia with MLRS and wiped out the “terrorists who were responsible”, who just happened to be Turkmen). Since military operations generally take place within the framework of economic conflicts (securing assets), the manner in which Russia responded to Turkey in the format état-à-état was the equivalent of what the lunatic Zhirinovsky suggested to do, just without the war crimes.

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The sanctions on Turkey (aimed at the CIA-Gulen bloc in reality) negated what Ankara was gaining from stealing Syrian oil, and so the Syrian theater became a zero-sum game for Erdogan. In May 2016 Davutoğlu was removed from the picture. Erdogan was forced to take part in the Astana Agreement and start the process of throwing his proxies in Syria under the bus (or onto green buses!) within the framework of what was given the reputation-saving name of “de-escalation zones”.

This was Moscow’s way of countering the game orchestrated by John Kerry, where a pocket in Eastern Syria would magically open (ISIS would go on an offensive) at a time when al-Nusra was on the ropes in Western Syria. This tactic hoped to tire out the Syrian Army and Russian “advisors” and maximise their casualties. Whilst never admitted in public by Moscow (naturally), “de-escalation zones” actually meant “we will liberate Aleppo and thus recapture all of the ‘useful’ (where most people live, in the West) part of Syria, after which the pace of the theater will have been slowed down enough to start work on eliminating the other players”.

After Aleppo was liberated (the Turkish-controlled groups magically withdrew), Russia continued, via the “de-escalation zones”, to whittle down the large list of terrorist groups into two categories: terrorists no longer supported by Turkey (loyal to al-Nusra leader Jolani) and tame terrorists still supported by Turkey. The former category would be shipped to Idlib via green buses, and the latter category would be used to keep the trecherous Kurds and the CIA-Mossad “Rojava” plan at bay.

In parallel to this, the Astana group managed to smash the Gulf bloc into fragments, liquidating their pet terrorist proxies in Syria and forcing them one by one to normalise relations with Assad, since the dollar is becoming a suitcase without a handle.

The question of the S-400 is more complex and isn’t just about defending Turkish skies. It symbolises more a commitment to play by the rules of the newly emerging world order (based on self-defence and international law) and to no longer indulge in the casino known as “Responsibility to Protect” (or in simpler terms – multipolarity vs unipolarity). Similarly, Turkish Stream is another example of Moscow thrusting a lance through the rotting corpse of NATO. In general, Turkey is geographically positioned almost in the center of the battle of superpowers. For Ankara, bearing in mind that the US tried to stage a coup there in 2016 and had a hand in the assasination of Andrey Karlov, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, it is more profitable to look East than it is to look West, and this was why Turkey wasn’t in a hurry to join the EU, since it saw the geopolitical storm brewing on the horizon and wasn’t prepared to kiss the ass of the IMF anymore.

So, returning back to the Syrian timeline, whilst al-Nusra was being herded into Idlib, and since Trump cut aid to US-backed terrorists, Turkey was able to monopolise the “Free Syrian Army” aesthetics (abandoned by the US) and occupy areas of Northern Syria whilst making it look like they are “Syrian rebels” and not Turkish proxies, all for the purpose of preventing the Kurds from travelling any more Westward than they already have. And here is where the array of interests becomes interesting:

Russia and Iran have basic diplomatic relations with the YPG/SDF (they are Syrian citizens after all) and want them to abandon the US/Tel Aviv/Riyadh;

The Syrian State wants the YPG/SDF to return to the bosom of the state and hand over the territories they occupy back to the Syrian Army;

Turkey wants the YPG/SDF removed from the picture/disbanded entirely, but has developed ties with Russia and Iran;

The YPG/SDF will not negotiate with Turkey unless it can hide behind America’s skirt;

Formally, Syria views Turkey as an aggressor, although behind the curtain Damascus has a pragmatic consensus with Moscow, which gave Turkey the green light to enter Syria in order to quell Rojava, and which is trying to stabilise the region and include all regional players in the Eurasian bloc;

Yes, it’s complicated. But here is a simple fact that helps the layperson to understand the situation: America has nuclear weapons. This is why Russia cannot stop the US from occupying Northeast Syria (which was plan B, plan A being a replica of Gaddafi’s removal, which failed after Russia cemented the Minsk Agreements in Ukraine). It can squash its proxies that are West of the Euphrates, yes, but it cannot touch US (non-proxy) assets, in the same way that Washington cannot touch Russian (non-proxy) assets. Or rather – they can directly touch each other’s assets, but any “victory” will be completely pyrrhic. From Russia’s perspective, the aim is to make friends with everyone, since the fewer enemies one has, the better.

While the core of the Turkish proxies is busy caging in (so-called “outposts”) al-Nusra militants in Idlib governorate, repelling the Kurds, and occasionally killing US soldiers, a kind of negotiation game between Turkey and Russia is ongoing:

Turkey needs a terroristified Idlib as leverage against all players but is happy to hand the governorate over to Assad piece by piece in exchange for pieces of the S-400/Turk Stream/general Eurasian bloc project;

Russia occasionally bombs Idlib in order to exercise its superior leverage over Turkey (the media presents this as “there were talks, but Russia continues to bomb Idlib”), the interim “ceasefire deals” are simply checkpoints in these grand negotiations;

Turkey turns a blind eye to al-Nusra’s oil operations (which feed their occupation of the governorate);

As an act of “hybrid war”, Russia and friends assist in the process of assassinating the commanders of al-Nusra in Idlib, since the less leverage Turkey has, the quicker the Idlib circus can end;

The West broadcasts propaganda about hospitals being bombed simply to cover up the fact that they have been arming and funding Al Qaeda for decades.

The “x-factor” in this conundrum is Trump’s “pull-out”. If US troops pull out of Northeast Syria completely, it would be in Russia’s interests if Turkey filled the void and proverbially herded the Kurds back towards Assad. For America, the sooner this war ends the quicker US troops can return home, but Trump won’t exit without getting something in return. However, there is a big problem – Zionism. Tel Aviv tries to keep America in Syria. Netanyahu didn’t spend all that time begging Uncle Sam to invade Iraq just for him to leave when the going got tough. Moreover, Iraq is already falling into the hands of Iran, and sooner or later the S-400 will be sat in Mesopotamia. Not to mention the fact that Russia is entrenching itself in Lebanon. Did I mention that Trump’s (purposeful?) decisions (and failed “deals of the century”) are strengthening the Palestinian resistance (example)? So what in all honesty does Israel hope to do?

Well, since everything that happened in the Middle East since 2001 (and arguably even earlier) is mainly in Israel’s interests, especially the Syrian war, it’s not a surprise that 8 years of full-scale local proxy warfare has reduced to… Israel taking aerial pot shots at a limited slice of Syrian territory. I have already explained why Russia doesn’t react to these airstrikes in the way that social media guerrillas would like, and all that has happened since is Netanyahu’s election victory. I would only add that bombing Syria became even riskier for Tel Aviv, since the SAA air defence units gain more experience with each new raid. Moscow managed to make a nice gesture to Israel, recovering from Syria the remains of an Israeli soldier missing since the 1982 war in Lebanon, but it wasn’t done for the purpose of stopping the airstrikes. It was simply a typical Russian diplomatic move based on the concept of “violence doesn’t beget violence”. Deflecting Israel’s airstrikes is the job of the Syrian air defences. The Israeli media presents this as “Russia has friendly relations with Israel and knows that Jerusalem considers Iran its leading existential threat, so does not block Israeli strikes at Iranian targets and those of its proxies, but on one condition: Stay out of Russia’s way and give ample warning so there won’t be a repeat of incidents like the one in which Syria shot down a Russian spy plane, possibly because of confusing signals by Israel”. However, in reality Russia wants Syria to become an independent adult, capable of defending itself without requiring Russia’s help, and it is only in this way that Syria will be able to successfully integrate itself into the Eurasian bloc. Of course, logically speaking, if Israel just left Syria alone and minded its own business, then Iranian forces wouldn’t even be in Syria. But I think that most know by now that Israel wanted (and maybe still wants) to carve Syria into 3 pieces along sectarian lines.

Another layer of the Israel problem is the fact that America is standing behind it (and thus the diplomatic support of many banana republics) and an illegal nuclear program, so it’s leverage when compared to Syria’s is superior, hence why the airstrikes happen in the first place. The incident with the downing of the Russian surveillance plane didn’t really change much, because Moscow knows that apartheid Israel is the main troublemaker in the Middle East (and even more so in Ukraine – those who truly understand Ukrainian history will understand why I say this), and the Syrian war coming to an end (whilst strengthening Israel’s neighbours in parallel) is in itself a blow to Tel Aviv.

What is very common to see now is countries seemingly sat on two chairs – the West and Eurasia. For example: Serbia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia show signs of looking both West and East. What is going on in reality is many tugs of war between superpowers, and the stronger Russia’s military and China’s economy become, the more it tips the scales in their favour, and the more “multipolar” the world becomes. It’s not that the US’ influence in a “converted” country disappears (the creation of NGOs is not illegal, and liberalism as an ideology cannot be physically destroyed), but more that the influence becomes less as the country adjusts to the new global economic reality. Although if Trump is indeed playing 4D chess with the “deep state” and is deliberately de-globalising the planet, then this shrinking of influence may be more fluid and less volatile than it seems.

In summary: Turkey – the driving force behind the Anglo-Israeli proxies in Syria – was forced to abandon its plans in Syria after NATO’s Su-24 shootdown gambit failed; Ankara and Moscow now mutually exchange a piece of Idlib for a piece of S-400; the Syrian war is now at the “exit negotiations” stage, but Israel doesn’t want to be left alone with a stronger Syrian Army, Hezbollah, and Palestinian resistance at its border; Russia isn’t in a hurry to liberate Idlib, since an alternative plan is to let the jihadists kill each other like spiders in a jar, thus the lives of SAA soldiers are not put in danger unnecessarily.

PS I am well aware that Turkey creates local councils, military adminstrations, and civilian infrastructure in North Syria, and I am not an advocate of such behavior but I don’t pretend to be more qualified than the Kremlin when it comes to solving such problems. I doubt that the Kurds would have behaved any different had they succeeded to create “rojava” in the summer of 2016. As for America, just look at what it has done to Raqqa and Mosul. Out of these options, I would prefer a temporary Turkish occupation, knowing that in the near future the situation would improve.

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thechurchreport · 7 years

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Is There Still Hope For Most Endangered Species?

Nature is both beautiful and mysterious. Man can’t help but wonder how nature managed to fill the planet and grow on its own and flourish without man’s help. They have provided shelter to a diverse list of wildlife that most of us haven’t seen face-to-face in our lifetime. And I guess, it is actually better that way. Many animals on the planet deserve to live on their own in their natural habitats rather than be transported to most zoos and circus for man’s entertainment and suffer a long, miserable, and lonely life in a steel cage.

With man’s intervention, we have managed to wipe out many animal species all by ourselves. From the threats of poaching, hunting, increasing urbanization, environmental degradation and climate change, how can these poor animals fend for themselves when the natural habitats they call home are no longer livable and that the planet has been increasingly becoming more difficult to live in?

The saiga antelope makes a strange pin-up for the conservation world. With its odd bulbous nose and spindly legs, it is an unlovely looking creature – particularly when compared with wildlife favourites such as the polar bear or panda.

But the survival of Saiga tatarica tatarica is important, for it gives hope to biologists and activists who are trying to protect Earth’s other endangered species from the impact of rising populations, climate change and increasing pollution. Once widespread on the steppe lands of the former Soviet Union, the saiga has suffered two major population crashes in recent years and survived both – thanks to the endeavours of conservationists. It is a story that will be highlighted at a specially arranged wildlife meeting, the Conservation Optimism Summit.

According to the summit’s organisers, there still are reasons to be cheerful when it comes to conservation, although they also acknowledge that the world’s wildlife remains in a desperate state thanks to swelling numbers of humans, climate change and spreading agriculture, which is destroying natural habitats. A recent report by WWF and the Zoological Society of London indicated that these factors have caused global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles to decline by 58% since 1970, and that average annual decreases have now reached 2%, with no sign yet that this rate will slow down.

(Via: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/apr/08/endangered-species-conservation-successes)

The world’s global biodiversity is fast depleting and many animals that were still here several years ago but have gone extinct can only be seen by future generations in books and scientific documentaries. It is disheartening that we are the main culprits why these animals were wiped off the face of this planet when we were supposed to be looking out for them and protecting them in the wild. The sad thing is that the threat is still here and will likely persist and along with it will likely take the lives of many other animals nearing extinction without a fight.

Climate change is rapidly becoming a crisis that defies hyperbole.

For all the sound and fury of climate change denialists, self-deluding politicians and a very bewildered global public, the science behind climate change is rock solid while the impacts – observed on every ecosystem on the planet – are occurring faster in many parts of the world than even the most gloomy scientists predicted.

Given all this, it’s logical to assume life on Earth – the millions of species that cohabitate our little ball of rock in space – would be impacted. But it still feelsunnerving to discover that this is no longer about just polar bears; it’s not only coral reefs and sea turtles or pikas and penguins; it about practically everything – including us.

(Via: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/radical-conservation/2017/apr/05/climate-change-life-wildlife-animals-biodiversity-ecosystems-genetics)

Climate change came too early because of us. The technologies that we all use contributed to the increase of greenhouse gasses and carbon footprint that made the planet hotter and messed up nature’s natural weather systems.

There are some places in the world that are just so important, so vital to the survival of wildlife and so important to surrounding people and their livelihoods, that even if we doubt we will ever visit them in person, we just know we must cherish them.

The Leuser Ecosystem (pronounced low-sir) is a vast, enchanting tropical landscape on the island of Sumatra. Spanning over 6.5 million acres of lowland jungle, montane rainforests and teeming, carbon-rich peat swamps, Leuser’s forests are among the most ancient on earth. This is a realm where volcanic eruptions, fluctuating sea levels, and species migrations over uninterrupted millennia have enabled one of the most biodiverse landscapes ever documented to evolve.

From its pristine tropical beaches to its rugged high mountaintops, the Leuser Ecosystem pulses with life. It is the last place on Earth where SE Asia’s most iconic species, orangutans, tigers, rhinos and elephants still live side by side in the wild. To step into Leuser’s steamy rainforests is to experience a serenade of biodiversity, a cacophony of buzzing insects, singing birds, croaking frogs and loud-calling primates.

The Leuser contains some of the world’s highest known levels of plant and animal abundance, with at least 105 mammal species, 382 bird species, and 95 reptile and amphibian species, among countless others still unrecorded by scientists. The rainfall Leuser’s forests produce, and the numerous clear rivers that emanate within them, provide millions of local people with clean drinking water and irrigation for agriculture, including water-intensive rice cultivation, as well as many other needs essential to local economies.

(Via: http://www.alternet.org/environment/humans-are-destroying-last-place-earth-where-orangutans-tigers-rhinos-and-elephants)

As the more superior species on this planet (in term of skills and intellect), we have a responsibility to protect the planet and everyone else living in it to ensure our species go on and on through the years. However, we seem to be too good at destruction that we have managed to invent technologies that speed up climate change and global warming at a rate never seen before in centuries. As a result, wildlife species suffer and go extinct, never to be seen again.

While climate change is already a deadly threat to everyone on earth, we can still do something about it and prevent further damage by changing our ways. Support the use of sustainable energy and reduce our energy consumption. Minimize our technology use that contributes to the deterioration of the planet. Also, we must put a stop to the poaching industry and safeguard the safety and well-being of animals in the wild. They are the helpless victims of all these catastrophes but are the first to suffer once Mother Nature strikes back. If we truly care for this world and everyone in it, it is time to redeem ourselves and find means to slow down the progression of climate change for everyone’s sake.

The blog post Is There Still Hope For Most Endangered Species? was initially published on https://www.thechurchreport.com/

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aion-rsa · 7 years

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INTERVIEW: McDuffie Award Winner Talks His Experimental Sci-Fi Comic

Since 2015, the The Dwayne McDuffie Award for Diversity has been awarded each year at Long Beach Comic Expo, celebrating the work of new comics which not only tell an interesting story with a diverse cast that represents voices who aren’t heard often enough in the industry — but which are changing the way people view comics as a whole.

Winning the award has become a signifier of work which is notable, fresh and contemporary, experimenting with comics as a form and bringing something new and thoroughly entertaining to comics fans. This year’s winner, Ezra Claytan Daniels’ “Upgrade Soul,” is certainly an example of that.

Originally released as a digital app in collaboration with Erik Loyer, the comic transitions the pages in a fashion unique for the digital format, and features a soundtrack from musician Alexis Gideon which flows through the pages as the reader moves through the story. It’s not just an incredibly well-told and smart piece of comics narrative, it’s one which explores what a comics narrative can be. Following Daniels’ win at this year’s ceremony, CBR spoke to the cartoonist about the project, how it came together and what it was like to win this year’s coveted trophy.

CBR: What’s your background as a writer and artist? How did you first get into making comics?

Ezra Claytan Daniels: I’ve been drawing comics since I was a little kid. I had a really terrible yet deadly serious comic strip about a troupe of circus performers fighting a manipulative alien in my high school paper. But my professional background is in graphic design and commercial illustration, with detours into forensic illustration and user interface design (I designed the UI for the mobile app, iAnnotate PDF). I started making autobio zines a few years after high school, largely as an excruciatingly juvenile attempt to meet women. Seriously, those old comics are the worst thing ever.

You’ve published several comics over the last decade or so, including “The Changers” and “A Circuit Closed”, but when did you first start work on “Upgrade Soul”? What made you want to tell this story?

I first started thinking about the ideas behind “Upgrade Soul” in my early 20s, before I did “The Changers.” I wanted to write a horror story, so I thought, “What’s the scariest thing I can imagine?” At the time, it was obsolescence. Being faced with someone who’s better at being me than I am. I was actually more into “Upgrade Soul” as a concept, but I knew I wasn’t a good enough writer yet to do something that ambitious. So I did “The Changers” first, sort of as a practice graphic novel. “The Changers” was ambitious, too, but it’s really low-key and straight-forward. It’s essentially an escape fantasy about myself and my roommate being super-beings from the future. I learned so much about making comics by self publishing that book, though, from publicity to working with distributors, to touring. I had a blast. After the dust settled, I sat down to really try to figure out Upgrade Soul. That was about 12 or 13 years ago. I’d been working on it off and on until I finally finished this past December.

Who are Hank and Molly, the two leads of the series? What kind of people are they, and where do we find them as the comic begins?

The two main characters, Hank and Molly, are based on my grandparents, Leon and Barb. They were like second parents to me growing up, and we were super close. I wanted the main characters to be people you don’t see in comics very often. I wanted to try to put myself in the shoes of people I knew very well, but who were very different from me. I wanted to make a book that didn’t feel familiar. Something I personally would’ve been really excited to see on a comic shelf as a reader. The story introduces Hank and Molly as wealthy investors in an experimental cellular rejuvenation procedure. Their only stipulation for support of the project is that they be the first to undergo the procedure.

The drama begins when a the procedure fails and Hank and Molly are faced with clones of themselves who are severely disfigured, but intellectually and physically far superior. The story is thematically about which counterpart better represents the identity of the individual; the one that looks and sounds like the person, or the one that’s, by every non-aesthetic metric, a perfect idealization of that person.

Your art style seems to primarily draw from both European and Japanese influences — is it fair to say those were the comics you grew up reading and loving?

I liked comics fine as a kid and teen, but I was way more into animation. And you called it, the films I loved the most were definitely Japanese and European. “Fantastic Planet,” “Akira,” “Lensman,” “Venus Wars,” “Fire & Ice” — these were on constant rotation.

I think there’s a very animation-y feel to my art — it’s very flat and clean, like animation cells. But after I dropped out of art school, I fell into trial graphics, doing medical and technical illustrations and infographics for court cases. That industry is all about clarity of information, with no room for embellishments. I definitely read “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” when I first started getting serious about comics, but I vehemently disagreed with a lot of it, particularly the part about using dynamic angles to heighten drama. I hated in comics when you couldn’t keep track of where characters were standing in a room because every panel was drawn from a different angle on the floor or ceiling. I think this aversion came from my time doing crime scene diagrams.

I never want my reader to be distracted from the narrative because I drew something weirdly. I sometimes describe my style as looking like an aircraft safety card.

You’ve released the story as an app in collaboration with Erik Loyer. Was it difficult to make that leap to digital, after first planning and developing “Upgrade Soul” in a more traditional format?

I’d been working on “Upgrade Soul” for a few years, pitching it around every once in a while but not really getting any traction. I’d done some work with Erik on smaller interactive comics projects, like his Reuben and Lullaby app, and an interactive essay he designed for academic Caren Kaplan, called “Precision Targets.” He started to develop an interactive comics platform for iOS and asked if I wanted to do something for it. I was deep into “Upgrade Soul” by then, and it hadn’t found a home, so I said “sure”!

I hadn’t done enough work on it by that point for it to be a huge hassle to imagine it for the digital platform, but it definitely still has roots in the print format. It was a seamless transition to the print version I’m shopping now. I’m definitely historically interested in technology and gaming, but I hadn’t given any real thought to digital comics before Erik approached me. Although, now that I think about it, I did put out the last issue of my crappy auto-bio comic a few years prior as a CD-ROM, so maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit! The “Upgrade Soul” app is on hiatus, though. It’s only the first half of the story.

Hopefully, after I find a publisher, we can work out a way to come back to it because I’m totally in love with it. It’s just not on the road map right now.

At what point did the audio aspect of “Upgrade Soul” first come into place? How did musician Alexis Gideon come on board the project, and what did that decision bring to the story overall?

Once Erik and I decided to work together, we just started having all these really heady conversations about the definition of comics and what to do and what not to do with the technology at our disposal. Our conversations eventually evolved into a manifesto that became the centerpiece of a digital comics portal I designed with Amsterdam-based Submarine Channel, ScreenDiver.com. A huge part of our digital comics philosophy was to never take temporal control from the reader. This meant that literal sound effects, which would have the effect of representing a passage of time, were out. But music, designed to create and maintain an atmosphere, was fair game.

In “Upgrade Soul,” the music follows your progress through the story, so every panel triggers a specific musical cue. You play the music almost the same way you read the comic, at your own pace. I’d done some design and animation work with Alexis, and we worked really well together. I’m just such a huge fan of his music; his singular brand of classically-trained experimental weirdo hip-hop was the perfect fit for “Upgrade Soul.”

When did you find out you’d been nominated for the Dwayne McDuffie Award?

I follow the Dwayne McDuffie Foundation on social media, and they posted a call for submissions a few weeks before I finished “Upgrade Soul.” The timing was perfect. I didn’t think I had any chance in hell of winning, but it’s just really helpful to have hard goals like that to finish something, especially since I was really losing steam toward the end. I guess it was a month or so later that I got an email from them letting me know I was among 5 finalists. I was incredibly honored, but even then, I didn’t think I had any chance of winning. I’ve never won anything in my life. And I was up against Dave Walker, who’d been having like the best year ever.

I didn’t find out I’d won until everybody else did, at the ceremony at Long Beach Comics Expo. It was so funny and awesome and weird. I happened to be the only nominee who was able to attend, since I live in LA, so they asked me to give a little talk before the winner was announced about what Dwayne McDuffie meant to me. I was so worried about how awkward it was going to be when I didn’t win! But little did I know that all the judges and Dwayne McDuffie folks already knew.

The ceremony was MC’d by Phil Lamarr, and it was such a surreal honor to get to hang out with the voice of Static Shock. Everybody involved in the foundation, and the judges, were so amazing and sweet and supportive. Charlotte, Dwayne’s widow, was just incredibly inspiring. It was most definitely the highlight of my career thus far.

Was Dwayne McDuffie a creator you were aware of, prior to your nomination?

My brother and I were constantly looking for heroes that looked like our dad, who was Black. We latched onto every Black character in the action movies we loved. The white neighborhood kids would fight to be Arnold when we played “Predator,” but we’d always be Bill Duke and Carl Weathers. We collected every black “G.I. Joe” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation” figure. But those characters were always sidekicks or bit players. So when the “Static Shock” cartoon came out, we were just transfixed. It was pure magic. I didn’t learn until years later how important Dwayne McDuffie was to so many other kids of color, and how monumental his legacy was.

It’s an award specifically noting works which offer representation within the pages — was that something you had at heart when you were making the comic, that idea of representing people whose stories don’t usually get told, and digging into their personalities and culture?

Absolutely. As a mixed race person (my mom is white), it’s an inextricable part of my being. “Upgrade Soul” gets into the ways in which our experience of life, or how we are treated by the world, forms our identity. It looks at the ways racial discrimination is both similar and distinct from age, sex and ability discrimination. These are the kinds of ideas that interest and challenge me as both a writer and a reader.

What’s next for you, following the conclusion of “Upgrade Soul” and as it now looks for a publisher? Do you have any other projects coming up?

Fingers crossed “Upgrade Soul” finds a good home, but it’ll come out this year one way or another. I also recently finished a short film collaboration with Adebukola Bodunrin that just started it’s festival life. It just screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Whitney in New York, and is screening at the Boston Underground Film Fest in March. It’s an experimental sci-fi animation that reimagines the Yoruba creation myth in a space station built around a simulation of the Big Bang. It’s called The Golden Chain.

I also have a new graphic novel on the home stretch with the incredible Ben Passmore, tentatively called “BTTMFDRS.” I’m writing it and he’s drawing it. It’s a horror comedy about gentrification and cultural appropriation and I’m so excited for people to see it! We should wrap that up by this summer so look for that this year, too!

To find out more about “Upgrade Soul” and Ezra Claytan Daniels’ work, check out his website and his Ttwitter account here.

The post INTERVIEW: McDuffie Award Winner Talks His Experimental Sci-Fi Comic appeared first on CBR.

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